Lost in the Lights
by Ryzxn
Summary: Amu is cursed with the ability to see a light in people right before they die. It's only a matter of time before she sees the light in the one person who holds enough of her heart to break it. She just had hoped that time would never come, or that he was so alive, so perfect, he could escape fate. But the world is no where near nice enough to give Amu that much. One-shot. Amuto.


Hinamori Amu is just an ordinary girl with an ordinary life. She isn't particularly popular, or smart, or beautiful, or cute, or a person who has lots of friends. In fact, she gets nervous around people, and when she does, she puts on her "cool 'n' spicy" facade to push strangers away. It's not that Amu doesn't like others; it's just a reflex to act like she doesn't need friends.

Because, once you get to know someone, even just their name, you get to care about them, and when you have a curse like the one Amu has, knowing people is not a good thing. Knowing people gets you to feel for them, to have empathy, and when they die, they break your heart.

That's why Amu stays away from everyone. Except for one person.

Hinamori Amu, a senior in high school, living her life as an ordinary person. Only she's different. She has a reason for being such a recluse. She hardly knows any of her classmates names, and knows nothing of their past. There's a reason for that too. See, Amu has a curse – or so she believes her ability to be. She sees things, light being the most important. In most cases, light would mean a good thing, but not for Amu. In Amu's eyes, a glow emitting from a person's body means they're about to die.

_Amu walks alone on the sidewalk, heading towards her home. It's late, and she knows she's going to be late for dinner – something her mom would kill her for. Well, it's not her fault there were gunshots heard from near the school right as the bell rang. Everyone went into a panic, even though it was eventually made known that the shots were blanks, a hunter trying to scare prey into his traps in a nearby forest, and Amu opted to stay and help the terrorized kids out._

_ It hadn't been the best experience for her, either. She was only a sophomore, helping to calm the nerves of people from freshmen to seniors, to teachers, even. She knew of her gift. She heard the shots and slapped her hands over her eyes. She didn't want to see. Didn't want to notice the faint glow that surrounded a person right before they lost their life. _

_ She'd seen it before a few times, once in middle school, when a kid she hardly knew committed suicide because of rumors started about him, then in various people, just going about their business with no relation to Amu whatsoever. And in father, right before he left, never to return. If she had known what the glow was then, when she was merely seven, she would've done anything to stop him from going, no matter how mad he was at her mom, or how much he wanted to just leave and drink the night away. Amu loved him, and the day she lost him to that dreadful luminescence was the worst day of her life. Twenty minutes after her father left, her mom got a call from the ambulance workers, saying something about a car accident, speeding, and her father dying instantly. _

_ Shaking the thoughts of her father away, Amu continues her trek home. She's about half-way there, and there's a short-cut through an alleyway that leads straight to Amu's neighborhood. Deciding to take that way, despite the darkness and looming shadows, Amu figures it's better to take her chances, since her mom and step-dad will kill her anyway if she's even later. _

_ Almost to the other end of the alleyway, Amu see's something. It's dark, and she can't tell what it is. Her voice shakes slightly as she calls out, "Who's there?" _

_ There's a squeak, and a muffled chuckle. A figure bolts away from where it was presses against the wall, and Amu realizes it's two people. As the first nears Amu, she recognizes her friend. _

_ "Oh, Amu, it's only you," Rima's voice caresses Amu's ears, calming her nerves. "I was worried you were someone who was going to get after me for being here."_

_ Before Amu can ask what Rima was doing there, Nagihiko approaches from behind Rima, and Amu realizes why Rima was so close to her home. Nagihoki is her neighbor, a good friend, who has had a crush on Rima since elementary. "Uh . . ." Amu manages. At least she's not the only one at a lsot for words. Nagi was a quiet as the dead, too, and, if there was more light, Amu could have sworn he was blushing. _

_ "Well, I should get going," Rima sings. She starts walking in the direction Amu came from after giving Nagihiko a quick peck on the cheek. _

_ Nagi calls out to her, "I'll walk home with Amu."_

_ "Right. Just don't do anything I wouldn't do," Rima calls in return, without glancing back. _

_ Nagihiko turns to Amu. "Shall we?" She nods in return._

_ They start walking, and, as they near the place where the alley opens up onto the street, Amu says, "So, you and Rima. . .?"_

_ "Uh, yeah," Nagi shrugs and stops walking, glancing back towards Rima's retreating figure. Amu follows his gaze, then stares. Rima's surrounded by a shimmering, golden incandescence. _

_ "No. . ." The whisper comes out as a sob._

_ "Amu?" Nagi looks at Amu with a worried expression. "Everything alright?"_

_ Tears begin to make tracks down Amu's cheeks. "No, no. . ." She starts taking off down the alley, towards Rima, but Nagihiko's arms wrap around her waist, preventing her from leaping towards her best friend, who's going to die. _

_ "Amu!" Nagi says loudly, nearly screaming in attempt to get Amu's attention so she'll tell him what's wrong. "Amu! What's going on?"_

_ "Rima," Amu chokes out, sobs forcing their way out of her chest. "Rima!" she yells at the top of her lungs. "Rima! Don't die! Rima . . ."_

_ "Amu!" Nagihiko shouts. "What are you talking about?!"_

_ Amu sinks to her knees, desperate to save her friend, but unable to. "Rima is going to die," she mutters, repeating the words. How? How could the bubbly, wonderful Rima die? Sure, she's gone through some tough times, but she couldn't just die. The world isn't that horrible, is it? She has to be wrong. The lights have to be playing tricks on her eyes. But, no, Amu knew, in the pit of her stomach, her eyes are not being deceived. _

_ "Amu, calm down," Nagihiko's voice softens, trying to comfort her. _

_ Sobs fight their way past Amu's lips that are insistent on muttering, "Rima. Don't die. Don't die, Rima. You can't leave me." _

_ Then there's a scream and the sound of a gun being fired. Amu's eye widen in horror, while Nagihiko's seem to widen in surprise. Dropping Amu, he takes of running down the alley, screaming, "Rima!"_

_ Amu slides to the ground, feeling as if the world is spinning. Glancing up at Nagi's running form, she sees a warm violet light surrounding him. Not Nagihiko. Not him, too. She can't lose both her friends in one day. No, no, no! _

_ But fate has a different plan for Amu._

Amu lost her best friend and her neighbor on the same night. She was questioned, and the police found there was little they could do about the pink-haired girl who kept repeating to herself "it's all my fault." They knew she wasn't to blame. They tried to tell her that, tried to tell her that there was no way she could have known there was a guy with a gun just around the corner, ready to kill anyone he saw just 'cause he could. But Amu wouldn't listen to them. She didn't seem happy that the guy had been found guilty for murdering two teens.

Amu didn't want to know about the guy. She didn't want to know that she was lucky she hadn't been there five minutes later, because then she would have been shot too. This is Amu's excuse for not being close to anyone. After her father and two of her closest friends, she didn't want to know anything about the people she saw the light in. In the past two years since Rima and Nagihiko's death, she's seen the light a lot more often. But it didn't affect her, since she just pushed those people away.

It was a lot harder to feel pain for the person you simply knew as a face you saw sometimes compared to the person whose past you knew and shared. It was better that way, so Amu believed.

And, yet, there was one person who got through the bulwark's Amu put up. One person so alive, that he slid past Amu's defenses. She felt herself with him. Felt so alive, that she felt everyone she once knew was alive too. And his name was Ikuto.

He's popular. Everyone loves him. Every female in the school wants to get together with the sexy blue-haired senior. Heck, even Amu is in love with him, even if she won't admit it to herself.

But then, something happens. After nearly six months without seeing the glow, Amu notices the familiar light in the one person she felt would be immune to it. The one person who knew her inside out. The one person she knew inside out. The one person she truly loved, and the only person left who could break her glass heart.

It starts faint, so faint Amu tells herself it's just Ikuto's natural glow that he has by simply being just so _alive_. But then it keeps getting deeper. Ikuto's life is fading away. Amu's never seen anything like this. A navy blue aura, swirling with shades and hues of blue and purple, surrounds Ikuto, weighing him down everywhere he goes for almost two weeks, and he doesn't die. Perhaps Amu's right, and he's immune to this trivial thing human call "death."

Then, Ikuto ends up in the hospital. He has cancer, a disease that was growing inside him so slowly, it was impossible to tell it was there until it was too late. He's a dead man. There's nothing the doctors can do. Ikuto is dying, and Amu knew. She could have stopped it, could have warned him, but she didn't.

The blame fell on her once again.

Amu visited Ikuto in hospital. She hated such places. There were too many chances Amu could see the light, but that wasn't going to keep her away from her best friend.

They talk, reminisce about life in general, something Ikuto will soon lose. Amu can't stay away from him in his final days. She sees the glow growing, consuming Ikuto, bathing him in it's sickly beautiful light. She hates and loves that glow at the same time. She loves it for it's beauty, the colors that swirl in it that make it so unique and so Ikuto, and she hates it for it's meaning, that Ikuto is dying.

On that final day Amu visits, she's had enough. She doesn't want Ikuto's death to come like this. She wants him to have a life. He's lived to his fullest until now, and no sickness should take that away from him.

_Amu barges into the room._

_ "Amu," Ikuto smiles weakly as he greets her. It hurts her to see him. It hurts even more to see how strong the glow has gotten. She glares at the glow, but Ikuto thinks she's glaring at him. "Are you upset?" _

_ Amu doesn't think twice. She walks to Ikuto's side with purpose in her steps. She calmly sits on the edge of his hospital bed, the hard look her eyes never leaving. She's determined. She's going to make this work, no matter what. Leaning down, her gaze softens as she looks into Ikuto's eyes for the last time. With Amu drowning in his blue irises, she kisses Ikuto. _

_ Ikuto is slightly surprised. Undeniably happy, but also slightly surprised. With Amu's lips connected to his, he could see. He realizes that he was so blind before. The room, once a dull hospital room with everything painted grey or white, now bursts with purest white, the most shimmering silver, and the deepest, more interesting of greys, with a hint of violet in them. _

_ Amu's eyes are open still, staring into Ikuto's gaze. Their eyes meet, and Ikuto sees the growing luminescence around Amu – a dazzling pink with reds and whites and all sorts of colors that Ikuto would have never associated with pink until now. He sees Amu's golden gaze dimming, and he realizes that something's wrong. Whatever Amu is doing is hurting her. He doesn't want that._

_ Ikuto finds strength in his arms again, and he gently pushes Amu shoulders so their lips disconnect. She gazes at him, her eyes suddenly bright again, but the aura around her is hurting her, biting into her sink, causing her to wince or flinch every second. Ikuto sits up, finding his strength returned, and Amu falls towards him, landing on his chest. Her breathing is labored, and her eyelids flutter closed. _

_ "Amu?" Ikuto asks. _

_ She mutters something incomprehensible in reply. Then manages, "I love you, Ikuto. Thank you. I'm free. I saved you . . . No, you saved me . . . Thank you." Amu stops breathing after that. The pink light disappeared._

_ Tears sneak their way past Ikuto's eyelids. He never cries. Unless, that is, the girl he's been in love with for two years just died in his arms. "No," he whispers in her ear. Whatever was hurting Amu, __he doesn't want it either. "I'm not stealing your life away from you, Amu. I love you, too, and won't take you love only to give none in return."_

_ So Ikuto kissed Amu's lips, still warm from the life that just vacated the body. Whatever Amu gave him, he didn't give it back, but rather gave it up. Give whatever was binding Amu to someone else. Set both of them free. Let them live their lives walking among the stars. And so, Ikuto let go, following Amu's soul to whatever place she waited for him in. They would dance among the galaxies together, and, no matter how lost they got, swimming with the stars, it wouldn't matter, because they could never be lost with each other._

And when the nurse walked in to Ikuto's room to check on him, she found two people there. It was long past visiting hours, yet there was another person there with the patient. Slightly annoyed, the nurse walked over to tell the person to leave, but instead of doing so, she simply stared.

Instead of two living beings, two corpses lay next to each other – the patient, who sat with his arms wrapped around the visitor, his lips pressed against her hair, and a pink-haired girl who lay snuggled into Ikuto's chest, kissing his shoulder, their legs tangled together. And as the nurse stood there, blinking in surprise at finding two dead people in a hospital bed when there should have been one, at the most, she saw a pink stream of light streak into the air, followed by a blue one. The two colors danced, swimming together and creating a hue so beautiful that when the nurse remembered the moment, she could never tell exactly what color she had seen.

Then the two dancing colors floated upwards, towards the ceiling, swimming into the night sky, mingling with the stars, and teasing the galaxies for never being able to match their beauty. Amu and Ikuto didn't need light to see, not when they created their own together.

** Wow. Okay. So, I thought that was pretty sweet, as in, the plot, and sweet as in cool since I actually finished this in one go. But that's why it's a one-shot, right? Excuse the horrible flip-flopping of tenses. (Past/present tense). I seriously have no idea what happened there. Anyway, I don't own Shugo Chara, and, uh, Review? Oh, and I got this idea from a video (that I don't own) that I saw a really long time ago. If I knew the name of the story or the writer, I would give it credit, but I was so young, I hardly even remember the plot, so, yeah. ;-;**


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